February 01, 2008

Zelikow Held Secret Meetings With Rove

I have said before that Zelikow is the weakest link in the 9/11 cover up. Now we learn that the neocon who was somehow put in charge of the 9/11 Commission was having secret meetings with Karl Rove:

A forthcoming book by NYT reporter Philip Shenon — “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation” — asserts that former 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow interfered with the 9/11 report.

According to the book, Zelikow had failed to inform the commission at the time he was hired that he was instrumental in helping Condoleezza Rice set up Bush’s National Security Council in 2001. Some panel staffers believe Zelikow stopped them from submitting a report depicting Rice’s performance prior to 9/11 as “amount[ing] to incompetence.”

Relying on the accounts of Max Holland, an author and blogger who has obtained a copy of the forthcoming book, ABC reports that Zelikow was holding private discussions with White House political adviser Karl Rove during the course of the 9/11 investigation:

In his book, Shenon also says that while working for the panel, Zelikow appears to have had private conversations with former White House political director Karl Rove, despite a ban on such communication, according to Holland. Shenon reports that Zelikow later ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls, although the commission’s general counsel overruled him, Holland wrote.

Zelikow flatly denied discussing the commission’s work with Rove. “I never discussed the 9/11 Commission with him, not at all. Period.”

After completing his work with the 9/11 Commission, Zelikow was hired by Condoleezza Rice as Counselor at the State Department. He resigned from that position in late 2006. In 1995, Rice and Zelikow co-authored a book entitled, “Germany Unified and Europe Transformed.”

Zelikow's academic history puts him right in line with the authors of the PNAC document [UPDATED to fix error: he was not in fact a PNAC author - g.]. For example, he wrote this in a 1998 essay called Catastrophic Terrorism:

Like Pearl Harbor, the event would divide our past and future into a before and after. The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently.”

Zelikow had previously said that the war in Iraq was for Israel:

“Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 — it’s the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.

“And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,” said Zelikow.

Phillip D. Zelikow’s doctoral thesis was “Myth Making and the JFK Assassination”:

While at Harvard he worked with Ernest May and Richard Neustadt on the use, and misuse, of history in policymaking. They observed, as Zelikow noted in his own words, that “contemporary” history is “defined functionally by those critical people and events that go into forming the public’s presumptions about its immediate past. The idea of ‘public presumption’,” he explained, “is akin to William McNeill’s notion of ‘public myth’ but without the negative implication sometimes invoked by the word ‘myth.’ Such presumptions are beliefs thought to be true (although not necessarily known to be true with certainty), and shared in common within the relevant political community.”

Is anybody asking the candidates for president whether they will convene a real 9/11 Commission?

Zelikow's Wikipedia entry here. Remember, THIS IS THE GUY WHO SMOTHERED ALL REFERENCES TO RICE'S JUNE 2002 MEETING WITH TENET!!!!

Folks on the 9/11 Commission expressing shock - shock! - that they were not told of the July 10, 2001 meeting between CIA leader George Tenet, Condi Rice, Richard Clarke, Steven Hadley, former CIA counter-terrorism chief Cofer Black and another CIA officer whose identity remains protected.

But then three former senior CIA officials said that is not true:

Former CIA Director George Tenet presented the briefing to commission member Richard Ben Veniste and executive director Philip Zelikow in secret testimony at CIA headquarters on Jan. 28, 2004, said three former senior agency officials.

Tenet raised the matter himself, displayed slides from a Power Point presentation that he and other officials had given to then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001, and offered to testify on the matter in public if the commission asked him to, they said.

Despite this, the 9/11 panel never asked for additional information, and never mentioned the briefing in their report. So why did Ben Veniste and Zelikow with-hold the information from their fellow members?

The July 10, 2001 meeting between Rice, Tenet and Cofer Black was first reported by Time magazine in August 2002. The magazine said Tenet's message was that he " couldn't rule out a domestic attack but thought it more likely that al-Qaeda would strike overseas."

Cofer Black, Tenet's former deputy, became an executive with private security contractor Blackwater.

Five questions for Condi:

Question 1: Why do you continue to deny that an “emergency meeting” took place on July 10th 2001 between yourself, CIA Director George Tenet and Director of the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center Coffer Black?

Question 2: How can you continue to claim not to have been warned of a possible attack in the United States in light of what we now know about the July 10th meeting?

Question 3: Given the evidence presented in the July 10th the meeting, why were no drastic and immediate new actions taken to protect the American people?

Question 4: How is it possible that the 9/11 Commission’s Report failed to mention the warnings of the July 10th meeting, given George Tenet’s testimony on the subject, witnessed by the Commission’s Executive Director Philip Zelikow, who now serves as one of your closest advisors?

3 comments:

RE: PNAC connection, I think you may be conflating Philip Zelikow with Robert Zoellick, who did in fact cosign two PNAC letters in 1998.(See comprehensive PNAC signatory chart) http://rightweb.irc-online.org/charts/pnac-chart.htm

Thanks, anon. I have updated the post to read: "Zelikow's academic history puts him right in line with the authors of the PNAC document." You can understand, given his thoughts on "catastrophe", why one could easily make the mistake!